Flexible poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) hybrid nanofibers for bioengineering and water filtration applications

Among the thermoplastic elastomers that play important roles in the polymer industry due to their superior properties, styrene-based species and polyurethane block copolymers are of great interest. Poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) (SEBS) as a triblock copolymer seems to have the potential to meet many demands in different applications due to various industrial requirements where durability, biocompatibility, breaking elongation, and interfacial adhesion are important. In this study, the SEBS triblock copolymer was functionalized with natural (Satureja hortensis, SH) and synthetic (nanopowder, TiO₂) agents to obtain composite nanofibers by electrospinning and electrospraying methods for use in biomedical and water filtration applications. The results were compared with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composite nanofibers, which are commonly used in these fields. Here, functionalized SEBS nanofibers exhibited antibacterial effect while at the same time improving cell viability. In addition, because of successful water filtration by using the SEBS composite nanofibers, the material may have a good potential to be used comparably to TPU for the application.     

A study of the local site effects on the ground response for the city of Eskişehir,Turkey

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - Local soil characteristics play a key role in determining soil-structure interaction and reliability of the superstructure behavior under...     

Contributions of higher order terms to nonlinear waves in fluid-filled elastic tubes: strongly dispersive case

In the present work, employing the nonlinear equations of an incompressible, isotropic and elastic thin tube and the approximate equations of an incompressible inviscid fluid, and then utilizing the modified reductive perturbation technique presented by us [15] the amplitude modulation of weakly nonlinear waves is examined. It is shown that the first order term in the perturbation expansion is governed by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation and the second order term is governed by the linearized Schrödinger equation with a nonhomogeneous term. In the longwave limit a travelling wave type of solution to these equations are also given.     

Self-aligning planarization and passivation for integration applications in III-V semiconductor devices

This work reports an easy planarization and passivation approach for the integration of III-V semiconductor devices. Vertically etched III-V semiconductor devices typically require sidewall passivation to suppress leakage currents and planarization of the passivation material for metal interconnection and device integration. It is, however, challenging to planarize all devices at once. This technique offers wafer-scale passivation and planarization that is automatically leveled to the device top in the 1-3-/spl mu/m vicinity surrounding each device. In this method, a dielectric hard mask is used to define the device area. An undercut structure is intentionally created below the hard mask, which is retained during the subsequent polymer spinning and anisotropic polymer etch back. The spin-on polymer that fills in the undercut seals the sidewalls for all the devices across the wafer. After the polymer etch back, the dielectric mask is removed leaving the polymer surrounding each device level with its device top to atomic scale flatness. This integration method is robust and is insensitive to spin-on polymer thickness, polymer etch nonuniformity, and device height difference. It prevents the polymer under the hard mask from etch-induced damage and creates a polymer-free device surface for metallization upon removal of the dielectric mask. We applied this integration technique in fabricating an InP-based photonic switch that consists of a mesa photodiode and a quantum-well waveguide modulator using benzocyclobutene (BCB) polymer. We demonstrated functional integrated photonic switches with high process yield of >90%, high breakdown voltage of >25 V, and low ohmic contact resistance of /spl sim/10 /spl Omega/. To the best of our knowledge, such an integration of a surface-normal photodiode and a lumped electroabsorption modulator with the use of BCB is the first to be implemented on a single substrate.     

GRAIL: a scalable index for reachability queries in very large graphs

Given a large directed graph, rapidly answering reachability queries between source and target nodes is an important problem. Existing methods for reachability tradeoff indexing time and space versus query time performance. However, the biggest limitation of existing methods is that they do not scale to very large real-world graphs. We present a simple yet scalable reachability index, called GRAIL, that is based on the idea of randomized interval labeling and that can effectively handle very large graphs. Based on an extensive set of experiments, we show that while more sophisticated methods work better on small graphs, GRAIL is the only index that can scale to millions of nodes and edges. GRAIL has linear indexing time and space, and the query time ranges from constant time to being linear in the graph order and size. Our reference C++ implementations are open source and available for download at http://www.code.google.com/p/grail/.     

Monitoring web services’ quality of service: a literature review

Monitoring Quality of Service (QoS) compliance is an important procedure in web service environment. It determines whether users’ expectations are met, and becomes the vital factor for them to decide whether to continue paying for the service or not. The monitoring is performed by checking the actual services performance against the QoS stated in Service Level Agreement (SLA). In relation to that, the need for monitoring vague QoS specifications in SLA has become more apparent nowadays. This paper reviews the published literature on web services QoS monitoring. A total of 60 selected articles were systematically analyzed. There were 23 of the articles selected through restrictive search criteria while the other 37 were selected based on unrestrictive search criteria. The review shows that little evidence exists on monitoring vague QoS specifications of web services. Providing ability for monitoring QoS that is specified vaguely in SLA could give new insights and implications to web services field. This paper concludes with some recommended future works to construct the theory and perform the empirical research.     

Unusual swelling behavior of polymer-clay nanocomposite hydrogels

The swelling behavior and the elastic properties of nanocomposite hydrogels have been investigated. The hydrogels were prepared by free-radical polymerization of the monomers acrylamide (AAm), N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMA), and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) in aqueous clay suspensions at 21 °C. Laponite with a radius of gyration in distilled water of 20 nm was used as clay particles in the hydrogel preparation. The reactions with AAm monomer were carried out in the presence of the chemical crosslinker N,N′-methylenebis(acrylamide) (BAAm). It was found that the volume of nanocomposite hydrogels immersed in water rapidly increases and attains a maximum value after about one day. Surprisingly, further increase in the swelling time results in the deswelling of the gels until they reach a limiting swelling ratio after about 5 days. This unusual swelling behavior is observable only when the clay concentration in the hydrogel is above the overlap threshold c^∗. Swelling measurements combined with the elasticity tests show that the effective crosslink density first decreases, but then increases with increasing time of swelling of the hydrogels. The results were explained in terms of the rearrangements of the highly entangled polymer chains and clay particles during the gel volume change.     

An in situ Raman study of the intercalation of supercapacitor-type electrolyte into microcrystalline graphite

An initial Raman study on the effects of intercalation for aprotic electrolyte-based electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) is reported. In situ Raman microscopy is employed in the study of the electrochemical intercalation of tetraethylammonium (Et₄N⁺) and tetrafluoroborate (BF₄⁻) into and out of microcrystalline graphite. During cyclic voltammetry experiments, the insertion of Et₄N⁺ into graphite for the negative electrode occurs at an onset potential of +1.0 V versus Li/Li⁺. For the positive electrode, BF₄⁻ was shown to intercalate above +4.3 V versus Li/Li⁺. The characteristic G-band doublet peak (E_2g2(i) (1578 cm⁻¹) and E_2g2(b) (1600 cm⁻¹)) showed that various staged compounds were formed in both cases and the return of the single G-band (1578 cm⁻¹) demonstrates that intercalation was fully reversible. The disappearance of the D-band (1329 cm⁻¹) in intercalated graphite is also noted and when the intercalant is removed a more intense D-band reappears, indicating possible lattice damage. For cation intercalation, such irreversible changes of the graphite structure are confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).     

Graphene oxide-containing isocyanate-based polyimide foams: Enhanced thermal stability and flame retardancy

Isocyanate-based graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams were synthesized by a semi-prepolymer method. In this method, while the first solution containing pre-polymer was derived from pyromellitic dianhydride and excess polymethylene polyphenylene isocyanate (PM200), the second solution contains dianhydride derivatives, water, catalysts, surfactants, and graphene oxide. PIFs were prepared with 0%, 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75%, and 1% graphene oxide by weight, respectively. PIFs exhibited a minimum side reaction and urea generation was not seen for all PIFs instead of imide bonding. The addition of graphene oxide (GO) leads to a more close-packed structure. Therefore, crosslinking density and thermal stability of graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams increased. Upon the addition of 1% GO, almost seven times higher compression strength was obtained compared to neat PIFs. Also, LOI values supported the theory that thermally stable and flame retardant PIFs can be synthesized via the isocyanate-based process with GO.